Lot of people call themselves Christians but arn't. They use it as a blanket to make themselves seem "good". Christians sin just as much as the next person and a true Christian is willing to admit that, that's why we need Jesus, alone we just go to hell.
Heck even within my church there has been a few divorces and stuff. This crap happens even to Christians.
The issue with this line of thought is a universal problem that all religions face, which is: who's to decide whether someone is a member of said religion or isn't?
The only absolute authority would be their respective god or gods, but clinging on to a text and allowing for any sort of sway from its direct literal interpretation opens up this inherent problem, among a whole host of other problems. If you're willing to interpret the holy text in this way, why is the other person not a christian if they choose to interpret it differently? Ultimately your guess is just as good as his or hers, thus you have to reserve judgment and either claim they are indeed christians or nobody is but you, or if you're going to be technical, nobody is a christian.
I'm a Bertrand Russell type of atheist, but I too can play the same game for the sake of the argument and claim to be a christian. Under the incredibly loose, I would claim practically nonexistent guidelines, I can be a christian as well. In fact I am. I just decided that I am so I am
😛
it's a bit of a silly hypothetical, but if you stop and think about it, it's quite valid as well. When you give up the right to decide between right and wrong and rely on ancient text with very loose interpretation, you consequently lose the right to even determine who is a follower of your own religion.
-- added rant
The OP's point, from my interpretation, is essentially what I've elucidated above. Christians, or ______ fill in your religion there, discard certain lines, texts or even whole "books" when reading the Bible to reach a conclusion that seemingly fits the tone of the modern culture in which they reside. This can be seen with Muslims in very downtrodden parts of the globe who flock to the strict literal interpretation of the Kuran. These places are devoid of Western influence and the
universal freedoms we hold dear. To them, stoning a woman to death after being raped is common practice. Yet when the Bible okays slavery, and even selling your own daughter into slavery, these parts of the holy book are often wholly ignored because they defy the logic and foundation which their society (read: Western society) is based upon.
To that extent, you could even make the claim that normal human logic and rationale actually leads you
away from the bible and its rather barbaric statements and rules. What I find to be incredibly hypocritical is that the same people who are bible-thumping are the exact same people who haven't actually read their own holy books nor truly believe in its texts either. If I were a christian, I'd be stoning people left and right because I'd be a true believer otherwise I'd be a sinner and a heathen. If you truly believe these were the words of god, then you aren't nor will ever be in a position to question them; whether they defy your own logic or not doesn't matter, as they're the demands and words of an omnipresent and omniscient being who can't ever be questioned.
At best the explanation for not applying these rules today and living by the same standards falls upon a rather meager claim of "well, that was then and not meant for today," to which you call into question the entirety of the bible itself and its relevance today. If those parts are okay to ignore, why not the whole of it? Why those parts and not others? Why can't we enforce those parts and ignore the peace and love parts? It's like Pandora's box.
--- more ranting
Lest we forget that during the Civil war, one of the reasons for defending the practice of slavery was the old testament itself. Clearly the interpretation of religious texts changes with the times. If that's not an answer to "God made man or Man made god?" question, I don't know what is.
